This Object
by unknown user
Summary: Rei deals with herself as a person not an instrument by realizing her love for Shinji in her own Instrumentality spawned inner perfect world spoilers!
1. 01: The Fate of Destruction

This Object  
Chapter 01: The Fate of Destruction 

Rei looked, but she saw nothing. Wrong, she saw nothing_ness_; darkness, without the light of hope. She felt the presence of others, but could not reach out to them, could not communicate. She heard a voice, distant and cold. Commander Ikari.  
"This is your life, your truth. This is your wish, Rei."  
"What do you mean?" She knew she should be confused, but she didn't feel it. She couldn't feel herself, not even in presence or in absence. She had no form, not even of mind; nothing existed except for the voice, and even that seemed removed, out of this world.  
"Nothingness. That is the fabric of this truth, _your_ truth. That is your wish. Or was it?" The voice chuckled, a wash of static and cacophony, frequencies that shouldn't be there. White noise fading into impresence.  
'I wish to return to nothingness. But he won't let me.' She remembered, in the absence of memory, her words from what seemed like long ago. Even the form of her conciousness was fading. A concept came to her, a meme out of place. _He let me._ But she didn't want it. She didn't want her choice, her torrid _wish_. It seemed to be too late, as she felt herself fading, her form becoming transparent even in spirit.  
Far in the darkest corner of her mind, a light came on.  
Akagi-hakase(0). She knew this person. A shadow from her former self. It was not a thing she wished to be illuminated.  
"A murder, and a suicide. Tried to squeeze the life from you, like a wet sponge. But you're back. Like me, there are always _replacements_"  
She bit back the strange sensation in the back of her throat, like slimy cockroaches covered in capsacin struggling and fighting up her esophagus. She knew her form was back now, but this wasn't the way she wanted to be notified.  
"Like mother, like daughter. These are the thoughts that occupied my mind, if one can describe it in those terms, in the time before the Instrumentality. But I now feel assured, since it can be applied to _you_ as well."  
"I have no mother." Rei's scarlet eyes brightened and pupils narrowed. A horrible realization, she did not know what it was to have one.  
"You surprise me." Commander Ikari. But she was not happy to see him.  
"You are not happy to see me? How sad. Is that the reason you betrayed me? Or was it something else?"  
She suddenly felt small. As if her body was shrinking in the wrong order, her head lagging behind in the miniatuization. She looked up, and felt herself forming the words from a past life. "Baa-san."() Her vision blurred scarlet, and she felt icy fingers tightly enclosing her neck, but still the words came. "Baa-san, baa-san, baa-san." The commander spoke.  
"You know yourself, who your mother is. Your soul, your body, they come from two mothers. And I am sure you have realized, I am now disgusted at the idea of my dear wife being one of them."  
Feel lifted off the floor, toes curling, the taste of bile and decay in her mouth. She jumped out of herself, her prior-life form left inside-out inside her heart, but omnipresent in her mind. _Lillith._  
'We are the same. We are born of the same being, but we both take the form of the lillim to live among them.' Nagisa Kaoru. _But he was wrong_. Rei looked inside herself, the interiority of his mind inside hers. _But he knew? He knew I was lillim._ She corrected herself. _No, not lillim, Ur-Lillim. The penultimate cursed being. I contain the soul and blood of Lillith herself._  
'We are the same.' _And he was Adam._  
"Now, you see what you truly are. Next, you shall see _who_."  
The commander's racous and maddening laughter filled her mind, the sounds visualizing, popping colours in her view of the darkness. Flowers. Pilot Ikari.  
"This is the Shinji inside of you."  
"Then, this must also be the Rei inside of you."  
Ikari looked at her, his eyes beginning to distort. _Water._ Water fell from his eyes. _Tears?_  
"Ikari-kun, why are you crying?" But she knew why, even before she asked.  
She saw in his eyes, in the water in his eyes. Shining through the darkness, infintesimally small, an image. His memory.  
'Why? Do you not have faith in your father's work?"  
'Not a father like him.'  
_Impact._  
"Why?" All the voices seemed to be asking at once, the voices of a world at loss without her presence and concience.  
"I..."  
"You don't have an answer?" The commander's face reminded her of something his mention could not.  
"I am his tool. I am his instrument. I must retain loyalty."  
All the voices in unison, again. White words on darkness. "Is that why?"  
"Yes, that's why."  
"Is that why?"  
"I belive that is the truth."  
"Is that why?"  
"I think so... I don't know. The Commander, I was his. His animosity was mine. But Ikari-kun. He was a threat."  
"A threat? What kind of dumb excuse is that? You're just a doll, aren't you?"  
"I was his doll. Ikari was a threat to all my dollhood. He was the antithesis to my status-quo."  
"So you slapped him?"  
"Yes."  
"So you slapped him?"  
"It seemed like the best choice at the time."  
A waterfall of purple hair. The smell of lavender. "Sometimes, people don't think. You can't say that it was a choice. Despite it all, you are emotional at the core."  
A flash of orange-red. "Just like me."  
"I felt threatened. He was... New. Different. He had the..."  
"He had the capacity to make you feel." Eyes behind orange oval glasses jeered.  
Eyes behind thick square lenses, a face in anguish, a face at peace. Pushing up the frames. "More than me."  
"He was breaking the status quo! He wasn't supposed to be there! I was supposed to be a tool, even if that wasn't what I desired. If he was absent, I would have never had to realize that." The blue-haired porcelin maiden looked down and fragile, and cracked.  
"You loved him?"  
A propogation. The cracks lengthen.  
"You loved him?"  
A propogation. The cracks widen.  
"You loved him?"  
"Yes! I loved him! More than anything."  
"More than you loved yourself?"  
Shattered.  
"Yes. I loved him. He made me feel, and he made me know the feeling. He is my alpha and omega(1). He is the one who let me in."  
"Do you love yourself?"  
"I am just a tool. An instrument, for that man. This is my time. I shouldn't be the one who's interrogated! I'm the cause."  
"Could you love yourself?"  
A shock of bright blue hair. A white plugsuit. "I am not worth loving."  
"Could you love yourself?"  
"I am simply that man's doll. I deserve nothing. Even if I wish to give my wholeness to another, I am bound by blood and duty to my master."  
The commander, bathed in the red light of warning, raises his head and smirks. "Enough of this. I suppose you will need to be shown firsthand."

The commander's son, bathed in the light of morning...

-----

Author's notes:  
There, first chapter done. I'll probably upload the second chapter at the same time, if nothing ties me up. Note that this beginning part takes place during the Instrumentality of Mankind, and consists of Rei being psychoanalized Hideaki Anno-style (which is to say, Rogerian-style (iirc)) by her inner self. The rest of the story (as far as I have planned) takes place in an alternate universe. This is similar to the alternate universe shown in episode 26 of the series (and there is some overlap), but one must remember, this is different because it is imagined by Rei. It's rather hard for me to come up with, since I am so much like Shinji, but I'm doing this as an escapade into Rei's personality for the purpose of a computer programming project I'm going to be trying (a simulation of Rei's personality, along with realtime animation of an interactive Rei).  
NB: Numbers marked in parentheses mark notes. A () marks a translation.

Notes:  
(0) -hakase is the Japanese honorific for "doctor" as in "researcher" (as far as I can tell... I'm picking this up from the Eva subs). Note that Akagi-hakase refers to Akagi Naoko-hakase (Akagi Ritsuko-hakase's mother). Not that it couldn't be figured out from context, of course...  
(1) "alpha and omega" comes from the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, respectively. Colloquially, it's equivalent to "the beginning and the end". In Christianity, it is often a role relegated to Christ. As Eva is based upon Kaballistic and ancient Judaism (among other influences), this could be Rei implying that he was the "messiah" (a concept that I believe is supported by End of Evangelion). But she could also be saying that he was simply _her_ savior, something accepted as fact. It could also mean that he is the beginning and end of her thoughts (or even, one may replace thoughts with anything intangible that makes sense). It's really up to the reader.

Translations:  
Baa-san: A term of medium respect for an older woman. Usually used for aunts and grandmothers in Japan. Doctor Akagi was used to getting more respect because her work was well known (so much so that her daughter notes the oddity that Misato did not know the name when they first met), and she seems to care about her looks and take care of them as such (perhaps for Gendou?), so she is doubly insulted by the implication that she is both old and undeserving of respect. Hence, the usual transation as "Hag". But also note that in Shinji's alternate universe, Asuka calls Yui "Baa-sama", and Yui is not insulted. Such is the flexibility of the Japanese language.  



	2. 02: The Joy of Rebirth

This Object  
Chapter 02: "The Joy of Rebirth"

Disclaimer: I don't own Eva. If I did, I would own Rei... And you can just imagine what I'd do with the clones :-) (Not THAT, you ecchi! Grr, dirtying the image of my pristine Rei-chan... :-( )

---

As Rei looked up from her bed, she thought she saw someone, blocking the red light of sunrise from her open window. _Ikari-kun!_ She wondered where that name came from, as her thoughts wandered in the twilight forest of light sleep.

She sat up suddenly, startled by the incessant buzzing of her alarm clock, a sond she had just begun to hear. The blue haired girl slapped down the set button of the small tandy(r) travel device, shutting off the cacophonous series of beeps and whirrs it was making, and beered under her hand at its face. _Not as early as I would have liked, but I'll still get there on time._ She took the time to survey her room, a familiar place, yet seeming rather new to her fatigued brain.

The room was barren, yet still rather cluttered. This is to say, there wasn't much in the room, but what little there was happened to be strewen around in the most inopportune places. Small figures of blue, purple, and red mecha (0) stood on top of the control panel of the ancient blue travel stove in the corner; a stuffed plush penguin (1) lied on its side in front of the grubby gray refridgerator beside it, a single magnet golding a yellowed shopping list, legacy cruft() from a previous owner. On the appartment wall opposite the short hospital-style bed, the suns brightness shown through the raped venitian blinds, playing across the bumps and bluges of unkempt covers and a pile of small pastel-colored pillows.

Everything was in order (or at least as orderly as it had ever been), and nothing was missing. Everything was the way she remembered it. _Then why do I feel so empty?_ She corrected her already battered Id. _No, not empty. Out of place._

She took some bread out of the freezer and stuck it, unthawed, in the dull smoky-colored metal toaster, fishing the kettle from out under a pile of mismatched playing cards (21 pickup by oneself is such a drag that is doesn't deserve the name) and a heavy cover-creased paperback novel (she reminded herself never to attempt War and Peace on an empty stomache, especially at 3 in the morning after a day of moving heavy boxes). Filling it with water, she placed it on the stove. _Maybe it was emptiness,_ she thought, absently turning on the wrong burner. _No matter,_ she decided, as she went to take a leasurely shower.

_Aaa, kimochii()... The water feels so nice._ She put that thought away as she proceeded to dutifully and efficiently wash every part of her body. She was just rinsing her hair when she smelled smoke. _Smoke? But this is a no smoking building... Wait..._ Her eyes lit up with realization as she ripped the shower curtain away, running dripping naked to the kitchen, where she came upon her countertop ablaze. She took a look at the corner, and finding the blood red extinguisher where it should be, she took it, her thin frame straining to hold it, and prepared for a blast of chemical retardants. She winced as she pulled the trigger, but...

Nothing. The fire burst as the reaction absorbed the new hydrocarbons from the bottom of the wall-mounted wooden cabinets. She stopped pausing for a moment, and took what she could find, grabbing a white piece of fabric that had been lying on the chair beside her. She smothered the fire, but pulling the charred and tattered cloth from on top of the counter, she sighed. _My brand new school uniform, ruined._ The (mostly) unharmed toaster dinged, and she gingerly salvaged the charred piece of toast from it, taking a bitter, carbonized bite and wincing. She sat back on the chair and glanced at the clock. 7:53. _Wait a tick... 7:53!_ She hurriedly put on her underwear and bra, and quickly ran to the door for her shoes, before running back and putting on the rest of her clothing first. She eyed the toast first distainfully, then greedily, and stuck it in her mouth before putting on her shoes and slamming the door behind her. A moment later, quick footsteps were heard coming from down the hall. The door opened, Rei retrieved her forgotten briefcase, and it shut again just as quickly.

The girl ran down the street towards the school, taking the only short cut she had been able to determine from her short time in her current residence, and figuring she'd get there late anyway. _What a crappy start to a day._ She ran down sidestreets, turning corners without looking beyond, and...

Impact. She fell to the ground, her legs splayed in front of her. She held her head, which was currently wondering why she wasn't still moving at breakneck speeds through the streets of Tokyo-3.

"Daijoubu desuka?()" An effeminate male hand reached out in her field of vision. She picked herself up and looked at his face. _Unremarkable. Familiar, though..._ She shook her head to this notion. "Gomen!()" she blurted, running off in the direction of the school.

Minutes later, she found herself in the middle of a large wooded area. It was filled with huge forboding pine trees. _Matsu...() Exactly what I shouldn't be doing right now._ She looked around helplessly for a long time, finally rembering the map she had in her briefcase. She looked at it, finding that there was a woodland park directly north of the school building. She had run right past the school. After a moment of bearings-getting, she found the direction that she should be going (the opposite of the one she had been) and found the school building, and moments later, room 2-A.

"Katsuragi Misato, that's me. I'll be your Home Ec'() teacher. I do homeroom, too. So you're Ayanami Rei, eh? Pretty name. Pretty face too." Misato-sensei ignored Rei's face of embarassmen. "I'll be happy to introduce you."

The purple-haired woman ducked into the classroom, and ducked out again to pull the young girl in. "Class, this totally cute chick is the new transferee! Be nice to her, or you'll eat my whip!(2)" There were a number of catcalls and such, and the shy maiden did her best to act outgoing. In her loudest voice, she said, "My name is Ayanami Rei. Yoroshiku!()" She looked around, half expecting surprise at her blue hair and red eyes, but not expecting at all the looks of desire, antagonism, and... Dumbfoundedness? She looked closer.

"You! You're the guy who ran into me this morning!" She didn't mean to be offensive, it was just a statement. A loud, angry-sounding statement.

"It wasn't his fault! You should have looked where you were going! Look," the red haired girl pulled on the boy's arm, revealing a large bandage above his elbow. "You injured him!"

"I... injured him?" She felt as if her head was being pressed, no, was compressing itself onto her brain. The pressure in her head was about to explode. She looked down, feeling like she was about to be sick. "Gomen..." she whispered, and ran out of the room.

Standing in the hallway outside the room, holding her hand to her mouth and crying and sweating, she felt a presence beside her.

"It's alright, really. See?" He pounded on the bandage with his fist, making a curious face as he held in the pain. "It's fine. Doesn't hurt at all."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. By the way, my name's Ikari Shinji. I didn't quite catch yours, over all the hooting and such..."

"Ayanami Rei."

"Thats a pr... I mean, nice name. Nice to meet you." He bowed deeply, and hearing voices calling him from inside the room, quickly apologized and ran back in.

---

Author's notes:  
This chapter had a lot of humour in it, mainly because I thought that would make for interesting reading (sorta the route that mangaka() take a lot of the time, for getting a bigger audience). Also, one must remember that Rei's day wasn't _all_ bad (she did meet Shinji). "Why would she dream this," you ask? Perhaps she is not totally okay with herself yet. "Why would this be her perfect world," is a better question, and one currently unanswerable by me. Hopefully, I'll be able to tell you eventually (didn't expect that one, did ya?)  
Note that (NUMBER) represents a note, and () represents a translation.

(0) - the mecha represent Eva, obviously (though some one who is not as obsessive as I am may not remember the colour scheme offhand)  
(1) - PenPen. I know Rei doesn't technically know him, but I thought it would be cute. Also, the fact that I used the word "lied" instead of the more gramatically correct "lay"... Well, it's a 'fake' world, isn't it?  
(2) - an Akazukin Chacha reference. Hey, if Hideaki Anno couldn't resist, why should I?

Translations:  
Cruft - hacker slang for "unneeded junk"  
Kimochii - Japanese adjective for feeling good  
Daijoubu desuka - Japanese for "are you all right?"  
Gomen - Japanese way of saying "sorry". Seen as rather childish, and gives a lot of respect to the reciever  
Matsu - the Japanese pronounciation for two different kanji: one means "pine tree", and the other is the verb "to wait". It's a pun, get it:-D  
Home Ec' - Home Economics, a course in managing living on one's own. Common in the United States  
Mangaka - a manga artist


	3. 03: Chemicals

This Object  
Chapter 03: "Chemicals"

Disclaimer:  
I do not own Eva, Gainax does. If I said "I own Eva", they would... Wait, do you see that? Far in the distance. It looks like a flying purple-haired maid(0), and... Sachiel? Oh my god, I'm too late! NOOO, NOO HIDEKI ANNO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  
_Ahem_. And that's what would happen.

---

After realizing she had forgotten her already-packed bento() this morning (add that to the long list), she quickly went to the cafeteria to buy one. However, it seemed she was rather late: as she walked along the series of booths where food would normally be served from, she saw no lines. At first she wondered why this could be, but put away that thought, replacing it with 'I am in luck'. However, that proved to be a false assumption, and she became more and more frusturated as she found that every booth held a single sign, red kanji on white: "Sold Out". As she closed in on the edge of the wall, she saw, past the last booth, a small home-made sign above a shoddily-made wooden booth, unlike the others, which were made of metal and plastic and were manned by actual School Cafeteria personel. This one was manned by two nervous-looking female first-year students wearing stained and smattered chef uniforms (also looking home-made).

"What's this?" Rei asked, eyeing the pot with reluctant hunger (she hadn't eaten anything since her breakfast of a slice of burnt toast).

The students looked at each other, each making gestures telling the other to respond 'first'. Finally, after half a minute, the taller one spoke. "Curry, left over from last month's Culture Fest. We had a lot left because no one came to our stand, but our home-room teacher said we have to keep trying to sell until we get rid of it all."

"So it doesn't go to waste," piped in the smaller one, quietly.

Rei looked at the strange bubbling mixture, and deciding that it was better than nothing, decided to take it. "Thanks," she said as the ladel made one plop on her plate. She paid the 150 yen(1) and made her way back to the room, now noticing the bento vending machines that lined the opposite wall (that would have saved her the trouble, but it was too late: she originally had only enough for one of the vending machine's wares, but after the curry, she no longer had enough).

As she entered the room, she looked reflexively towards the source of the noise she had heard faintly out in the hall. _Ikari-kun and that red-haired girl are fighting again,_ she mused.

"Fine, I'll get my own lunch! It's your fault for not noticing I hadn't brought mine, the least you could do is give me some privacy while I eat it ALONE. As in, without you!"

Rei sat down in an empty seat in the far corner of the room. As she was debating taking a bite of the curry (it looked far more disgusting illuminated by the sunlight streaming through the classroom windows than it did in the dark corner of the cafeteria), as she heard a voice.

"Mind if I join you?"

She looked forward at a hand holding a cloth-wrapped bento, the same hand that he had held out to her this morning. She held in a blush. "Why?"

He pulled out the chair of the seat in front of her and sat. "I thought you looked lonely over here." He lowered his head. "I also wanted to apologize about ruining your morning."

"Don't worry." Rei looked him in the face, her eyes smiling even if her face was not. "It was ruined long before our encounter."

Shinji propped his elbow on the table and held his chin in his hand, giving her an earnest look. "You know," he said in a knowing voice, "sometimes you have a bad day just so you'll know a good day when it comes." She felt about to tear, but she didn't know why. She held it in, and took a bite of the curry.

_Impact_. As the curry touched her tounge, the taste took her by surprise. Her eyes watered in spite of her efforts, her nose run, she gagged, and she made the most sour face Shinji had ever seen.

She stood up, fearing she had already done the worst thing possible, but not understanding the circumstances thereof (more specifically, _why_ it was so bad), nor caring either. She picked up her plate to throw it out, walking towards the first stop on her eventual trip to the bathroom to spit and rinse out her mouth. She was almost to the trash can when she heard a muffled shout. She turned to see Ikari, having tripped on the red-haired girl's outstreched foot, coming towards her at breakneck speed.

_Second Impact_. He fell into her, flipping both her plate and the trashcan. As he fell, he tried to catch himself with his arms, but ended pinning one on her breast instead. For a moment, suspended in midair, it seemed like in slow motion. The whole class turned to look. Suddenly, it went back to regular speed again (which is to say, much too fast for a first date ;-) ), and she found herself under his (considerable, taking into account the fact that he was both short and shrimpy) weight. The whole class gasped, and Misato walked in the door.

"Now, Shinji-kun. No raping allowed during lunch break, especially not involving food. It's too messy to eat off each other, not to mention the lack of time for foreplay." She laughed at her own joke, ignoring the fact that they were both fully clothed.

Shinji got up quickly and stood up totally straight, blushing furiously with his hands at his sides. "Gomen!" He looked in her direction again, noticing the fact that Rei's blouse was covered in all sorts of food. "That's going to stain. Here, let me help you clean up." He held out his hand again.

"Don't worry, I can do it myself." She stood up, and he withdrew his hand. She began to clean up the mess on the floor. "At least let me help you with _that_..."

"No, I am not in need of any assistance. It is my own mess." He opened his mouth to respond, but then realized that there would be no convincing her otherwise, especially with Asuka making trouble.

"Ikari-kun." He turned to look at her with inquisitive eyes. "Thank you."

---

Author's notes:  
This was a rather rushed chapter as I had many things I had to do that interrupted its writing. Please don't mistake the decreased quality of this chapter with an overall decrease in the quality of this fic! Doing that would be unjust!

Translations:  
Bento - Japanese-style boxed lunch

Notes:  
0 - The flying purple-haired maid is everyone's favorite battle-android-turned-personal-servant, Mahoro Andou, from MahoroMatic (another Gainax production, which was in fact worked on by Anno-sama himself. Interesting to note, the similarities between the giant gun used by Mahoro later in the first season, which she connects to a power plant, and the gun rather like it used by Unit 01 in episode 6 of Eva, do not seem entirely coincidental, given this fact).  
1 - 150 yen is, by my approximation, about $1USD. Cheap for a school lunch, but I think that's my point, ne?


	4. 04: Solid Empathy

This Object  
Chapter 04: Solid Empathy

Disclaimer:  
I do not own Eva, but someday I shall... And I'll make Asuka pay for calling my Rei-chan a doll... HAHAHAHAHAHA!  
Remember, kids: every time you write an Asuka-Shinji lemon, Kaoru kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens!

---

A few weeks had passed since Rei had joined Tokyo-3 High School(0), and she no longer felt out of place. She had gotten used to the drama as summer had turned to fall(1) and the normally warm climate had gotten cooler. They blamed it on El Nino(2), stating that global warming and other environmental problems had caused a strange shift in wind patterns, making the normally mild Kanto(3) region become more like New England(4) on a bad year. It was the most major news to come into the strangely quiet city since she came, which was odd. Rei had always believed in the Hobbesian(5) idea that the bigger the city, the more would be wrong with it, but Tokyo-3 was the new capital and it had no crime to speak of, not to mention no news of major political movement (despite the fact that the government buildings were stationed quite close to the school; in fact, they were just on the other side of that forest). Not that it had become a wasteland, no. It had actually become more beautiful, with leaves changing color for the first time since the tree's ancestors had been brought here by whatever forces, natural or unnatural, had done so.

It was boring.

At first, she loved the calmness, the inherent lack of danger or major conflict. But now, as she sat on the school's roof, wind whipping her already mussed blue hair around, she wished for a change.

She felt something on her shoulders.

It was warm, and it wrapped around her like a fuzzy blanket of hope and amiability. She turned to see that hand she had become so familiar with, and found that it had just finished draping a black winter uniform around her unconciously shuddering shoulders. "Arigatou.()"

"It's no trouble." The boy smiled and his eyes laughed joyfully, his head tilted slightly to the side.

"Aren't you cold?" She began to unwrap the gift from her torso.

"No, I'm used to it. I've been on a few trips to Germany with Asuka to visit her family, and it's much colder there than it is here. I kind of like it, actually."

"Oh." Rei's heart sank at the mention of the red haired gaijin(), but she was determined not to show it.

"So, what are you doing on the roof all alone like this?" His eyes were wistful, not inquisitive, so it seemed that he was not so much asking for the answer as much as to hear her soft voice.

She shook off that notion and answered, though she herself fell into wistfulness, as was difficult to avoid given the beauty of the experience and the simple elegance of the exchange. "Thinking," she said, not expanding on that notion but leaving it to his imagination. "What about you?"

"Oh, well... I saw you out here, and I felt like keeping you company." His voice was soft and smooth, like burgundy silk sliding across ancient laquered mahogany.

"You are kind. Why do you think so much of others?" Her softly inquisitive tone stated that it was simply a question.

He glanced at her, taking a long slow sip of her beauty and aura, and answered candidly. "Because I give them presidence over myself." If he had exposed himself like that to Asuka, it would have been like he exposed his pumping, bleeding heart to a starving rabid mountain lion: he would have been attacked, torn to mince, flesh being ripped by razor canines, and eaten all but bones, the snow around them red with fresh blood. But She was different. She would never hurt him. She _cared_, it seemed, dispite their very distant relations(6).

They sat there for a blissful eternity, Rei taking in the scent that permeated the black wool coat, a sweet, distant lullaby of memes and memories rocking her into calm slumber. He was simply glad to be by her, and she knew that somehow, intuitively. As if he was a part of her, and she a part of him.

Shinji opened his heavy eyes, bathed and submerged in beauty, the deep oranges and pinks of a warm sunset just on the horizon. He started to try to get her attention. "Hey, look at th... Oh. You're asleep already." He stopped looking at the sunset to look at a more beautiful sight. He pulled the coat back onto her slumbering shoulder where it had fallen off, and she tumbled softly into his lap. He stroked her hair until the night was deep blackness, immersed in the practice of the forbidden pleasure. She stirred, and her mouth made soft movements in the cool night, but she was bathed in the warmth of his body heat. _Ikari-kun_. He was so submerged in the euphoria of his humming head that he hardly noticed the presence behind him.

---

Author's notes:  
This is a pretty short chapter (I think...), but it's very full of the feelings I was hoping to impart. I hope you all enjoyed it as well. I'll bet you're all wondering what this presence is... You'll just have to wait and see! (It's not an angel, if that's what you're thinking; I'm not that bad :P).

Translations:  
Arigatou - (Japanese) "thank you". Normal form.  
Gaijin - (Japanese) "foriegner". Has the implication of an outsider. (Don't worry, Rei isn't a xenophobe... It's more of a Japanese culture thing; in fact, a lot of Japanese people think gaijin are really neat, and so it's not usually a derrogatory term. After all, almost all anime/manga characters are gaijin anyway :-P)

Notes:  
0 - I used the idea (borrowed from a number of other fics) that they are in high school instead of junior high; after all, by the end of the series they are all 15 (or most of them, at least), and I also thought that HS would be a more condusive setting for a romance.  
1 - School in Japan starts in the spring, but I took the liberty of having Rei come in later on in the year (during the late summer, around the end of august maybe).  
2 - El Nino (with the second 'n' having a tilde over it, in Spanish called an "enyay" (spelling, anyone?)) is a global weather pattern supposedly caused by environmental conditions like global warming, holes in the ozone layer, and deforestation. In the mid-90s it was fashionable to blame strange weather on El Nino, but lately is seems to have fallen out of style (perhaps the strangeness of the weather has become standard, and it no longer requires a reason?). Weather buffs will know what I'm talking about, even if I don't ;-).  
3 - Kanto and Chuubu are the regions mentioned in the first episode of Eva, when they are listing off what regions are in a state of emergency because of the Angel. I just picked the first one, thinking it was likely the region that Tokyo-3 was in (although I can look it up, since I have it documented; I'm just too lazy).  
4 - New England is the part of America first settled by the British, and stretches from Maine to New Jersey and from New York to Pennsylvania. It is also the area I am from (I'm a Connecticut man, can you tell?). It has historically been known for long, harsh winters, which is not true of all areas, but a Japanese person likely wouldn't know that.  
5 - Refers to the works and dogma of Thomas Hobbes, a pre-rennaisance (or possibly early-rennaisance) british philosopher who believed that chains of causality were the ultimate force governing the world. He wrote a number of texts on the subject of the social group as an automaton, which was very quicky misinterpreted by almost everyone as saying that kings are necessary (which was not the point at all; he simply used a monarchy as an example) and that humans were inherently bad. Thus "Hobbesian" colloquially means relating to or agreeing with the idea that people are inherently bad. I think this is also the person that Hobbes from the 'Calvin and Hobbes' American syndicated comic strip was named after.  
6 - No, I do not mean that they are genetically or familially related! (Not sexually either.) I'm saying that they are distant friends, except in prettier words.


	5. 05: Genesis

This Object  
Chapter 05: Genesis

Disclaimer: I do not own Eva. Maybe some day Hideaki Anno will give it to me. I'd like that... While he's at it, maybe he'd give me Kare Kano too... _drool_

--

The couple sat together, warmly enjoying slumber beneath the starlit sky. The boy stirred, suddenly aware of a presence behind him. That realization awakened him, and he quickly turned his head, gingerly so as not to wake the softly snoring beauty in his lap. As his eyes adjusted to the contrast between the sillouette and the brightness behind it, the unmistakable form came into view.

"Otosan..."()

"I thought you'd be here. Your mother sent me to look for you. Come to dinner."

The sleeping girl stirred, and looked up, realizing suddenly where she was. Her blush was all but hidden by the shadows of Shinji and his father against the school's blinding antitheft lights.

"You can take her home with us. I don't know the way to her residence, and it is too dark to travel far."

Shinji went first, and as his eyes slowly adjusted to the pale yellow brightness of the house's incandescent lighting, he saw a familiar face framed by short brown hair. She held a dipping spoon to her mouth, tasting the broth of a nice-smelling but rather suspicious mystery stew.

"Tadaima()." She turned to him and smiled.

"Okaeri(), Shin-chan." She looked to the door, as she had seen a timid eye peek out from behind the frame. Shinji motioned for her to come in. As Yui saw the girl, she kept the same smiling face, but the delay in reaction speed exposed her real thoughts (not to mention the fact that she dropped the spoon on the floor and failed to pick it up until after dinner). "Oh, how nice. You have brought a friend. And qu-quite cute, a-as well." Her face could be read like a psychology text book: "oedipus complex" was written in bold, underlined, directly under "page 24" with the rest blurred out. She composed herself, and said "We're having mango and broccoli stew; I hope you'll stay and try it." Gendo took this time to walk in, take off his coat (which he draped over the short wall near the doorway), and give his wife a passionate kiss (or at least try to; his wife, unfortunately enough for him, was still preoccupied with two things: 1. why did this girl look just like her, and 2. since when was her Shinji into blue hair?).

"Okaasan(), this is Rei. She's a tenkouse() in my school." He blushed preemtively and continued, "she and I fell asleep on the roof, and Otosan found us and brought us back here. H-he said she could st-stay the n-night..."

She broke away from her whipped, already contact-starved husband's lips, looked at the pair, and said "Excuse us." She went into the adjoining room, and called her partner, "Anata()..."

The two took their places at the table and waited in awkward silence, trying vainly to ignore the paranoia in the tone of the muffled shouts behind the closed door next to them. The married couple burst out of said door a few tortuous minutes later to serve dinner. Needless to say, no one mentioned that it was in fact a mango and onion stew.

--

Author's notes:  
This is a bit of a hurried chapter, but I hope you'll enjoy it. I didn't originaly want to characterize Yui like this, but it grew out of my need to include a joke from a previous fic I wrote that had a similar scene... Maybe if I decide it's too much, I'll rewrite this chapter, but for now let's see what kind of reviews it gets. Well, at least you all know what the "presence" was... OooOOooOo, scary huh?

Notes:  
(none)

Translations:  
Otosan - Japanese for "father". Respectful.  
Okaasan - Japanese for "mother". Respectful.  
Tadaima - Japanese stockphrase for "I'm home". Said every time one gets home, even if there is no one there. Literally "Just now".  
Okaeri - Japanese stockphrase for "Welcome home". Said every time someone else gets home and you are there. Literally "You went out and came back." Short for "Okaerinasai".  
Tenkouse - Japanese for "transfer student". Also means "part-timer", as in someone who works part-time.


	6. 06: Meme

This Object  
06: Meme

--

"Hey, Shin-man!" Touji stood in front of the boy, blocking his view. He looked up, reluctantly, towards the figure sitting on the desk diagonal from his, and smiled.

"Hey, Touji. What's up?" His greeting was cheerful, chipper even, but with a slight tinge of annoyance, likely directed towards the boy's location.

"What'cha lookin' at?"

Shinji feigned innocence. "Oh, nothing in particular."

Kensuke, who was actually assigned the desk that the tracksuit-clad figure was sitting on, piped in, vainly trying to change the subject. "So, what shoud we do for the English project? Misato-sensei is giving us pretty much free reign."

This was a mistake. "Oh... Er... About that..." Shinji tried to put it in a way that wouldn't hurt their feelings.

The two boys looked at him curiously, wondering what on earth he was on about. The three _always_ worked together. Unless...

He spit it out, quickly, in an almost incoherent string of unseparated syllables. "Imworkingwithsomeoneelse." He took a deep breath and let it out, then added "gomen".

The two boys looked at each other, then back at Shinji. "Oh, I gots it! You got dragged into working wit that Red Devil!" Kensuke let out a noise of understanding, whilst Touji gave a slight proud smile, happy that he figured it out.

"Well," the bespectacled boy started, "that's ok with us. It's beyond your control; we understand."

"Chigau.()" The two boys veered back slightly, both egos knocked firmly out of the zone of understanding.

"Den who?"

Shinji nodded over Touji's shoulder. Both boys turned to look. They saw Rei, making her usual pose, head propped on hand, staring out the window. They turned slowly back, wide-eyed and somewhat disturbed.

Shinji continued his explanation, this time with words.

--Flashback--

Shinji looked up from his stew, and glanced towards the blue-haired albino sitting beside him. He watched her stare at her own bowl with a mixture of hunger and an avistic fight-or-flight reaction. Noticing his stare, she turned towards him to give a questioning look. Yui, watching carefully, gave a soft snort as she turned back to her food. Gendo was unaware that anything was going on.

The boy decided to start some light conversation. "So, Rei... What are you going to be doing for that English project?"

Her face softened slightly, then she stared down into the murky substance in front of her. "I don't know," she managed.

He smiled. "Well, I suppose if you have no idea, you can ask your partner to choose..."

Her soft face quickly became more rigid and devoid of emotion. "I... don't have one."

The blue-eyed boy looked serious for a moment. This should have been expected, as she didn't seem to have any friends yet. He should have avoided that line of reasoning, so as to avoid as well making her feel insecure. He felt thoroughly dumb. Then an idea hit him, and his face brightened considerably. "I know! Why don't you work with me?"

She looked up slightly. She wasn't sure if this was a joke. No one had ever asked to work with her before, apart from necessity. And, to be sure, no one had ever seemed so... enthusiastic... about it. But this boy, this Ikari Shinji, he had been so nice to her. She had no logical reason to doubt him at this point, aside from her own self-esteem. Just one word, just to be doubly sure. "Really?"

"Yeah. It'd be fun!"

The pale face softened once again, and the red eyes brightened into a shine as the normally untelling mouth formed itself into a slightly awkward smile. "Yes. That would be acceptable." She felt... enthusiastic... inside.

--End Flashback--

The two boys looked at him like he had 57 and a quarter heads. After a moment, he questioned it. "What?"

"She's certainly a strange one, isn't she?"

Just then, a wisp of purple hair was seen at the doorway. Rei mentally sighed. Why was Katsuragi-sensei never quite on time?

"Rise. Bow. Sit."

"Good morning, class." The class made a strangled effort to respond, inhibited, as always, by the guys (and a few girls, too, some of them for different reasons) who were drooling over the teacher's corporeal form and choice of wardrobe (the latter of which, to be sure, didn't do much to conceal the former). The woman continued. "I realize now that an assignment like 'do some sort of project relating to English' is a little too vague. Forgive me; I'm used to teaching home ec, and the fact that I happened to be the only one on the payroll who passed college english when your previous teacher had to be called away was pretty much tough luck. Damn school board, too cheap to hire a new teacher... Though I shouldn't be talking; I'm certainly enjoying the extra half pay I'm getting." She sensed that she was losing the class, so she got straight to the point. "So, I'm assigning you a new, different project; one that you will hopefully have fun with. You all will be researching different types of jokes, and presenting your findings to the class. In english, please."

Satisfied at a job well done, she sat down, discreetly reached her hand into the partially hidden side pocket of her bag, and fingered at the tab of her beer can, harbouring fantasies of a quick trip to the ladies' room with her precious. _Contraband can be so sweet_.

Shinji walked over to where his partner was sitting. She turned to him, and despite the lack of a verbal greeting, the softening of her face was greeting enough for him. He sat down in the empty seat beside her. "Well, we'd better get down to work on this. We need to figure out what we're going to do and get it approved before the end of the day." He secretly figured that Misato would approve just about any kind of joke, unless it was about her age.

"Tell me," she said as she looked over her companion, "what is a joke?" He eyed her nervously, and then broke out laughing.

"That was a good one. Subtle, too."

She gave her trademark confused, deer-in-the-headlights look. "I do not understand. Is what I said strange?" She wondered why he had broken out into some sort of spasm after she asked a simple question. Was he allergic to something? Did she trigger some sort of repressed memory, something that made him feel immense pain? But he said it was a 'good one', so perhaps it was pleasure. Was it necessary that he be taken to the hospital?

"Of course it's strange. Everyone has heard of jokes..." He was not getting anywhere with this train of discourse, so he tried something else. "A joke is something that makes you laugh. Like what I just did. It's something... strange, or unexpected, that makes your body react, and it feels really good."

"Like sexual intercourse?"

The boy blushed. "Uh... Maybe not quite THAT good."

Rei still was confused. "Give me an example." She hoped that perhaps she would then understand.

"Ok," Shinji agreed, glad to be off that subject. "Let's see... jokes... Ok, here's one: why did the chicken cross the road?"

Rei responded quickly. "That would depend on the chicken."

Shinji held in a chuckle. _She's good at making jokes, so why can't she understand them_. "Any chicken."

"Would it not also depend on the road in question, as well as the general surroundings?" She asked puzzledly, not understanding the purpose or relevance of this brain teaser. "For example, there could be food on the other side, or a rooster, or a mechanical chicken caller. Or, there could be other chickens crossing, and this specific chicken could be following." She had never seen a chicken, let alone a group of them, so she wasn't sure that they had flock behavior, but she guessed.

"The answer is, 'to get to the other side.'"

There was an awkward pause. The girl started suddenly, "That seemed too obvious to be relevant."

He was obviously getting nowhere with this, and knew both of them would fail if she didn't understand what a joke was. But he persevered, knowing that he would not allow himself the dishonor of abandoning her and letting her fail on her own. "Let's try something a little simpler." He thought for a moment, and then said, "A man walked into a bar, and said, 'ouch'."

For a moment, there was what seemed like total silence. Then, suddenly, Rei heard a strange sound from her own mouth. She was hyperventalating. She shook and doubled over herself, making sounds much similar to those that Shinji had made. She was frightened out of her wits, seemingly not in control of her body. If one could keep their point of view still enough in reference to her movements to allow seeing into her eyes, they would show an expression of intense, coporeal fear and lost hope. After what seemed like an eternity, it stopped.

"I guess you really liked that one." And she did. It was, aside from the fear, quite an enjoyable experience.

"Tell me another one. I think I'm getting closer to understanding."

---

Author's notes:  
Well, it's finally done. I really have no acceptable excuse for the delay. Sorry. Anyway, I hope you like this chapter. I certainly enjoyed writing it.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Eva.

Translations:  
- Chigau: (Japanese) wrong.


End file.
